"I am disappointed that the Board (of Supervisors) did not fully fund basic maintenance in this year's budget. This year's funding to our county roads falls $6.5 million short of the minimum amount needed to keep our roads in their current condition.

In effect we have shifted that money from maintenance to deferred maintenance and the compounding expense associated with failing to maintain our assets.

The Board in contrast spent over $5 million on various expenditures not recommended by our CEO, including climate change planning, plastic bag bans and pay raises for county managers.

It’s famously been said that elections have consequences. If voters want their assets maintained, then voters should vote for officials who are fully committed to that end.

I believe the public wants us to maintain our assets out the money they pay us now, rather than new taxes to pay for roads, buildings and parks. Maintaining what you have isn’t ideological, it’s practical. ”

Thank you for raising your voice to these critical county infrastructure concerns. You may be a lone voice on the board, but you are not alone among county voters.

Time for the board of supervisors to refocus and redefine the scope of local county governance. It no longer works to simply renew funding for the accumulated tasks from the past. Back to basics to fund first and ensure on-going revenues match present needs.

Conversion defined-contribution county pensions needs to be implemented at every point possible until it is the new way the county does its business.

Living with the transitional disruption period caused by a temporary two-tier employee compensation system is far more orderly than abandoning this unsustainable fiscal burden to another generation of county taxpayers.

If we had started this pension plan conversion when we saw the problems coming over a decade ago, we would have been already almost half way to its necessary resolution. Bite the bullet. Do it. Future SB generations will applaud your bold moves undertaken 2013.

Much like we applaud the vision of those who committed funds to build the stunning county courthouse back in 1926 we continue to enjoy today. I am sure those present funds could have been used elsewhere, or not at all yet those supervisors saw where they wanted to be much further down the road and they did the right thing in the present back then to get there.